Daring to Look by Anne Whiston Spirn

Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field by Anne Whiston Spirn reviewed by Amy Churchill, Branch Head of Zauel Memorial Library
(University of Chicago Press, 2008, $40.00, 359 pages)

Dorothea Lange’s haunting photographs of families in California and the Pacific Northwest during the Depression era remind us that there is reason to hope even in tough economic times. This thoughtful and meticulously researched account of Lange’s career features many unpublished photos from the groundbreaking photographer’s 1939 portfolio. It includes some of Lange’s famous portraits of sharecroppers laboring in tobacco fields and mothers with their hungry children as well as some of her lesser known landscape photos. It’s a fitting tribute to one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century.